On Thursday, November 20th, Desire2Learn Inc. deployed Service Pack 11 and 12 to our D2L Learning Environment.  In this latest update, the following fixes and enhancements were included:

Accessibility

• Fix: Screenreaders no longer falsely announce changes to dates as if they were live regions.

Checklist

• Fix: Checklist item descriptions that exceed 4000 characters are now saved and displayed successfully.

Content

• Enhancement: In new courses, the first time instructors access the content tool, the “Table of Contents” landing page now includes an informative message about importing course material and creating modules.
  
  
• Enhancement: The content navigation panel usability was updated to provide a collapsible navigation panel.  The next and previous buttons were also relocated to make it clear if you were moving between topics or modules.
  
  
• Enhancement: User can now navigate more easily through topics with the addition of Next and Previous icons above and below the content.
  
  
• Fix: Improvements were made to prevent sort order issues due to deleted and reordering Content topics.
• Fix: Users’ completion status for group dropbox folders now display correctly in Content.  Completion tracking for a user’s submission is no longer cleared due to subsequent submissions to the group dropbox folder by other group members.

Discussions

• Fix: Posts with attachments containing filenames valid in iOS but not in Windows no longer cause topics or thread to become inaccessible.

Dropbox

• Fix: Dropbox submissions from users who are no longer enrolled in sections can now be opened and evaluated.

File Management

• Enhancement: Previously the same warning message was displayed when users attempted to overwrite existing files with uploaded or moved items in a location where an items with the same name already exists.  Now, different messages display after the following actions:
  • If users cut and past, or copy and paste a folder to a location that already has a folder with the same name, they see a message informing them that if they complete the action the contents of the new and existing folders will be merged and any existing files with the same name will be overwritten by the new files.
  • If users upload, or cut and paste a file into a folder that already has a file with the same name, they see a message informing them that if they complete the action the new file will overwrite the existing file.
  • If users copy and paste a file within its own folder, a number is appended to the end of the copied file’s name and the file is pasted as a duplicate.  No message is displayed.
    
    

Grades

• Enhancement: Users will no longer see a percentage value indicating the percentage of bonus points they received compared to the total available bonus points.  For example, “5” will replace “5/0”.
  
  
• Enhancement: A “save and close” button is now available in Grades for grading a single item.
  
  
• Fix: When adding a grade item to a dropbox assignment in Content, the correct list of available grade schemes is now displayed.

HTML Editor

• Enhancement: When users enter a URL in HTML Editor, it will automatically be converted into a link.
• Fix: Users in Internet Explorer 10 can now immediately enter text into the HTML Editor for a new Content topic after they change the file path for the topic through the “Change Path” option.
• Fix: When users select text in HTML Editor that they want to use to insert a quicklink to a URL, the select text now automatically populates the Title Field in the quicklink’s URL details.

Quizzes

• Enhancement: The quiz time limit on the quiz detail page is now displayed in hours, minutes and seconds.  Previously, it was specified as an integer with no units.
  
  
• Enhancement: Previously, the Quizzes tool communicated that a quiz was always available to users by including the word “Always” on the Quiz List page.  The language has now been changed to read “Always Available” to avoid confusion.
  
  
• Enhancement: The “Time Remaining” clock now displays hours, minutes and seconds.  Previously, it only displayed hours and minutes.
  • If a quiz is set for more than an hour, the clock flashes when there are 10 minutes remaining.
  • If a quiz is set for less than an hour, the clock flashes when there are 5 minutes remaining.
  • Regardless of the set time, the clock will flash when there is only 1 minute remaining.
    
    
• Fix: Improvements were made to the Question Library importing process to ensure questions and sections maintained proper ordering within a quiz.
• Fix: Ordering questions with long text answer options now wrap correctly to the page width and do not require horizontal scrolling to read the full text.

Rubrics

• Fix: Rubric associations are now maintained when copying discussion topics using Copy Course Components.
• Fix: Rubric associations are now maintained when multiple courses have access to the same rubrics after using Copy Course Components.

If you have any questions or concerns about the service pack updates, please contact UW-W D2L Support.

On Thursday, July 31st, Desire2Learn Inc. deployed Service Pack 7 and 8 to our D2L Learning Environment. In this latest update, the following fixes were included:

Quizzes

• If Question Library contains thousands of questions, attempting to delete hundreds of questions simultaneously no longer result in an error.
• Previously, when users paged through the responses to a question that has more responses than other questions, the system remembered the page number they were on, and when they returned to the list of questions to grade a different question with fewer responses, the system brought users to a blank page 1. Now, quizzes correctly display questions and responses.
• Because the same question cannot be imported into a Question Library more than once, an error page now appears to explain to users why some questions were not imported successfully.
• The Equation Editor option now opens correctly when users open the HTML Editor in a pop-up window in Question Library and select it.
• When editing quiz question types, users can now successfully delete answers with empty value fields without encountering an error.

Dropbox

• Users working in Chrome browsers can now upload files to Dropbox folders successfully.
• Instructors now remain on the Evaluation page for a user they evaluate after they click Publish, Update, or Revert. Previously, clicking these actions would automatically take instructors to the next student, and often instructors who were not aware of the change assumed their feedback wasn’t saved successfully and mistakenly do the evaluation again for a different student.
• Dropbox now accepts submissions with file names that contain a period ending. For example, a Microsoft Word document called “MySubmission.” will upload successfully as “MySubmission..docx”.

Content

• The Content tool no longer automatically adjusts the Due Date or End Date for a module or topic when a user edits a Start Date or Due Date. The date and time associated with a Start Date, Due Date, or End Date will only change if they are explicitly set and saved. A validation message will appear to users when they set an end date to occur before a Due Date. Validation checks to ensure that the Due Date and End Date are after the Start Date still apply.
• Uploading a file with a name that is identical to an existing topic file now updates the topic successfully and no longer causes the creation of a new topic too.

Import/Export/Copy Components

• An error no longer occurs when copying a course with Dropbox folders that contain special access.
• Course files with commas in their names now copy successfully to new courses and an error no longer occurs. For example, a course file with the name “Module1,Reading1” now copies successfully through the “Copy selected components” or “Copy all components” workflow.

Discussions: If you attempt to export User Statistics from the Discussions Statistics/User tab, you will now get Discussion Statistics instead of Forums and Topics.

Grades: Instead of sorting by internal UserId and ignoring “Key Field”, the grades export file now correctly sorts by “Key Field” as set by the user.

Calendar

• Calendar events that include YouTube videos now display the video correctly when users read the events from the Agenda view.
• User interface changes were made to the List view’s “Filter By” activity type control. The changes include fixing wrapping issues that caused the control to wrap across three lines, and the “X” icon is now replaced with the words “Clear all filters” to improve usability.

Competencies: Copying courses with a large number of competencies that have associated quizzes no longer results in a timeout.

User Progress: The system table holding user login history was restructured to prevent slowness in login and querying.

If you have any questions or concerns about the service pack updates, please contact UW-W D2L Support.

Desire2Learn is scheduled for an upgrade to version 10.3. The upgrade outage will start at 9:30 PM on Wednesday, June 4th, 2014 and end at 10:30 AM on Thursday, June 5th, 2014 (all times CT).

During this upgrade, D2L will NOT be available. This outage and upgrade will greatly affect Summer courses, so please plan your course work accordingly. It is also suggested that you end any dropboxes, quizzes, or other deadlines a half hour before the outage’s start time (i.e., 9:00 PM CT) if there are items due on that day.

In addition, Learn@UW has scheduled server maintenance on Saturday, June 14th from 6:00 AM to 10:00 AM. Desire2Learn will not be accessible during this window.

We have a “What’s New” video for instructors that highlights some of the changes that are coming with the upgrade.

A “What’s New” wiki page is also available that covers version 10.3 tool changes in more detail, and you can visit that page here: https://geturl.uww.edu/1sk

If you have any questions about the D2L upgrade, please Contact UW-W D2L Support.